Salahdine Parnasse’s Slick Southpaw Kicking
Pavel Andrusca’s Crafty Blitzing
Felipe Lima’s Rhythm Manipulation
Salahdine Parnasse has long been considered one of the best fighters outside the UFC, his list of accolades almost as impressive as the eye test. Parnasse ruled KSW with an iron fist for years, winning both their Featherweight and Lightweight championships. One of his two losses was avenged within the year, while the second came in his bid for a third belt up at Welterweight.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Parnasse’s skillset is its breadth - he’s a true MMA fighter who has something for just about everyone at long range, in the clinch, and on the mat. But he needed none of that breadth to dispatch Dan Hooker in under three minutes, letting his slick southpaw kicking game do all the work.
Salahdine Parnasse’s Slick Southpaw Kicking
One of the big concerns for Parnasse as he entered the UFC is how he would deal with larger fighters. Parnasse last fought at Featherweight three years ago and has since packed on muscle, but the regional scenes are far less serious about weight cutting than the UFC, and the average quality of athlete is much lower. Now that Parnasse is in the UFC, he can expect to be on the smaller side at Lightweight, but that didn’t hurt him at all against the longer Hooker.
When facing a reach disadvantage, there are two broad methods of closing the gap. Pressure is the most obvious, taking away the space of the taller man and forcing him into exchanges. But an alternative is to stand farther back, outside the reach of the taller man’s weapons. If he can be made to fall short, he’ll be encouraged to step forward and surrender his own reach willingly.
Parnasse is a capable pressure fighter, but he’s not the most comfortable in the pocket, and Hooker has dangerous intercepting knees. The path of least resistance was to leverage his sharper long range kicking game and force Hooker to respond to the threat of his kicks.
Early on, Parnasse focused on being all the way outside of Hooker’s weapons, standing just close enough to land his kicks with a step in, but far enough to give ground and make Hooker’s miss.
While Hooker had length on him, Parnasse is much more geared toward this sort of fight. His stance is relatively narrow, feet slightly wider than shoulder width, with a light lead leg, allowing him to quickly shuffle his feet for kicks and pick either leg up at a moment’s notice. In contrast, Hooker stands very wide, greatly reducing his maneuverability for landing or defending kicks. His rear leg placed far back in his stance limits his range on kicks with the lead leg, and his front foot is well in front of his center of gravity, making it slow to lift up on a moment’s notice.
Parnasse kept the fight on the outside, avoiding Hooker’s most dangerous weapons, and forcing him into attacks Parnasse was prepared to deal with. Even when Hooker found the range on his kicks, Parnasse had little trouble checking them.
It’s difficult to out-kick a taller fighter, especially in open stance matchups, where a longer rear kick is such a powerful tool. But Parnasse's balance and defensive responsibility was stellar, and he shut down Hooker’s rear leg with a cross check, raising the lead leg high to stave off both leg kicks and kicks to the body.
If you follow me on twitter, you’ve probably seen me rant about the lack of kicking depth in MMA. Over the past few generations, the level of boxing in the sport has risen rapidly, with fighters not only becoming more effective mechanical punchers, but also developing depth in ancillary skills - setups, footwork patterns, and building off opponents’ reactions. But a good kicker in MMA is still largely one who throws fast, hard kicks, and maybe has a few reliable setups to land them. Tactics that support a deep and effective system haven’t trickled in from Muay Thai and kickboxing the way they have from boxing.
Dan Hooker would only need to see an opponent trying to duck under his rear hand once - maybe even a slight twitch at a feint - before he’s ready to drive his knee through their jaw. But when he found a way to reliably predict when Parnasse would put himself on one leg to lift the other high in the air, his only response was to keep kicking into the check. That’s not to say Hooker would have kept doing something that wasn’t working had the fight gone on longer, but Parnasse gave Hooker ample information to work with in the time he had, and he didn’t take it.
Parnasse’s kicking game shone by comparison, as he was able to not only build off his attacks and exploit Hooker’s reactions, but anticipate likely counters and shut them down. The best idea Hooker had was to return each kick Parnasse threw with a leg kick of his own. The idea is great conceptually - if you’re being kicked, that means the kicker is close enough for you to kick back, and he’s planted on one leg for a moment, where a leg kick can do serious damage and take out his base. Even if you can’t defend the kicks, taking a body kick to land a hard leg kick can be a worthy trade, just to give the kicker counters to worry about and threaten their main weapon with attrition.
But Parnasse anticipated the counter leg kicks and shut them down with a preemptive check. This is something you rarely see in MMA even among skilled kickers. It takes not only excellent balance and efficient mechanics to return the kicking leg directly back into the stance and immediately lift the planting foot, but it also requires the sort of anticipation beyond the initial strike that is much more commonly associated with punching offense in MMA than kicks. When Parnasse lifted his leg to check and their legs clashed, he was even ready to punch off it without missing a beat.
Parnasse quickly found the finish with a spin on the classic southpaw double attack. The southpaw rear kick is such a dangerous weapon because it can attack both the body and head with great force using an identical preliminary motion. Kicking the body draws the elbow down and exposes the head, but covering the head exposes the body. It becomes a perilous guessing game for the defender, with the end goal typically being to land a clean, hard kick to the head. While Parnasse established his head kick as a threat early, it was his body kick that took Hooker’s liver and ended his night.
Note how efficient Parnasse’s kicking mechanics are. He takes a small step forward to initiate it, sometimes even kicking on a hop without a visible forward step, in contrast to Hooker’s large, telegraphing steps. His hips stay relatively neutral at the start, sending the kick in a straight line to its target, rather than opening early and kicking in a wide arc, enabling him to better sneak it under the elbow. When he grazes a head kick and his leg crosses over Hooker’s head, he doesn’t spin around and lose his target; his mechanics leave him balanced to curl his knee in, plant his kicking foot right in his stance, and launch a powerful rear hook that forces a stoppage.
The speed and power of Parnasse’s kicks dazzled the much slower Hooker, but his power was largely a factor of speed and perfect placement, while his speed was greatly bolstered by his efficient mechanics. For those who haven’t watched much of Parnasse, he has a lot more to his skillset than he had time to show off against Hooker. After a perfect debut, he’ll likely get a highly ranked opponent next, and he’s arrived at the perfect time in his career to capitalize on a quick start to his UFC run. His prospect days are over at this point, and it’s time to see if he can hang in the Lightweight title picture.
While Parnasse’s performance was unmatched, the biggest surprise of the night came from newcomer Pavel Andrusca, who thoroughly outfought crafty and underrated vet, Nathaniel Wood. After the paywall, we’ll discuss Andrusca’s thoughtful blitzing style and how Felipe Lima took advantage of Morgan Charrière’s head movement.
